Icons. Nikodim Kondakov
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Название: Icons
Автор: Nikodim Kondakov
Издательство: Parkstone International Publishing
Жанр: Религия: прочее
Серия: Temporis
isbn: 978-1-78310-700-1, 978-1-78042-925-0
isbn:
We have already seen that, in contradiction to the encaustic painting with its rich deep tones[52], there existed the parallel art of wall-painting with its light tones. This occasionally passed into a mere ‘colouring’ or ‘illumination’ of the figures in flat tones with no gradation, meaning there was no real modelling, or merely, a faint lightening of the tones on the big folds of the drapery. This ‘fresco’ scale of light tones finds its way into icon-painting from time to time when the supply of truly iconic models fails, as for instance in the icon-painting of Nóvgorod and northern Russia. The pale style has its coat of pale ochre, whereas the rich colouring has red ochre.
The Greco-Italian icon-painting in the latter half of the fourteenth century and in the fifteenth had under the hands of Paolo and Lorenzo Veneziano and Catarino worked out a warm iconic colouring which gave rise later to the colouring of the great Giorgione. It was not merely the natural surroundings of Venice, the deep, rich evening colouring of the Venetian lagoons, but also the decorative beauty of Greco-Oriental icons adopted by Greco-Italian icon-painting that, as we shall see below, provided the historical foundation for Venetian colouring. The earliest channels by which the lost period of Greco-Oriental painting exercised its influence were the Korsun’ icons; next we have a series of icons with dark ochre flesh, and this is followed by a great influx of Greco-Italian, more particularly Venetian icons which awoke a lively movement in the Russian schools.
The unusual phenomenon of two-coloured reflexes in Greco-Italian and Nóvgorod icon-painting was observed long ago, not as ‘reflexes’ or reflexions of complementary light on the folds of drapery, but as a ‘special form of high light’ (probêl[53]) produced not with white but with other colours. So, following the directions of the Russian Podlinnik, he remarks that in Nóvgorod work of the sixteenth century on a garment coloured maroon (bakán) the folds are streaked with blackish green. But when he describes light blue garments as lightened (probêleny) with maroon and dark blue with purplish red (bágor) he is in error. His mistake is due to probêl being essentially a lightening whereas the dark red tints are used for shadows and not for bright areas. We know something of this practice of using brown colours for drapery with bluish reflexes as far back as the early Christian mosaics in Cyprus, the church of S. Praxed at Rome, on the Virgin’s raiment in the chapel of Venantius in the Lateran[54]. Even the Italian fresco of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries knows the use of greenish reflexes on reddish draperies, still earlier in S. Angelo in Formis in the Neapolitan Campagna where it comes from the Greek Orient[55]. It is important to bear in mind that in the true Byzantine miniatures and frescoes reflexes in complementary colours are not encountered; here reigns the ordinary system of highlights (probêl).
45. The Archangel Gabriel, 1387–1395.
Egg tempera on plaster on canvas mounted on wood, 146 × 106 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
46. The Archangel Gabriel, (panel from a Deisis), beginning of the 15th century.
National Museum, Lviv, Ukraine.
47. Leonardo da Vinci, Saint Jerome, 1482.
Tempera and oil on wood, 103 × 75 cm.
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican.
Finally, all through the icon-painters are therefore right from an historical point of view in basing the distinctions they draw between various styles and manners (póshib, a smaller class than pis’mó) in Russian icon-painting upon colours, for the colouring really is the criterion of independence and creativeness. As a matter of fact it is most important to realize that I, for instance, know of only one single Russian icon which is an absolute copy of a Greek original. This is the icon of the Nativity of Our Lord in the church at Pskov; it is exactly like a Greek icon in the State Russian Museum; the only difference is in the inscriptions. Naturally such copies if they did exist were only single examples, all other icons were executed in various painting-shops by means of tracings. Besides, we see nowadays that icon-painters learn the drawing and the colouring of one particular manner and are bound to paint just in that manner and no other; only craftsmen trained to paint in other techniques (called podstarínshchiki because they paint pod starinu ‘in an archaic manner’) can copy old icons. For an exact copy of an ancient icon you must go to a podstarinshchik or, better, not to an icon-painter at all but to an ordinary artist. Between the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries we find no such adoption of Greek or rather Byzantine colouring as we do in the twelfth and thirteenth; nor do they quite adopt the colouring of the Italo-Cretan icons Russian icon are easily distinguished. The master or pupil makes up his colours himself. First he mixes raw yolk of egg with thin kvas (rye beer) or water, and drops a little of this mixture which starts rather yellow, into ten or fifteen gallipots, and in these he dissolves his colours, as he has need. The craftsmen of Mstëra or Palëkh, the icon-painting villages of Vladimir, can distinguish in which of their painting shops an icon was produced. When he puts before a customer samples of his colours a painter now offers twenty-four or more: ochre, sankir, light sankir, sankir with white lead, black, bágor, bágor with white, sky colour, prázelen’, white lead with chrome, white lead, reff, golubéts, green, dich’, azure.
To define these colours, which have in the West passed into history, would be difficult and it is not worth while, it would be easier to give a coloured plate with a reproduction of them all. None the less, some general account of them may be given. The names of the colours and the general scale answer to the Pódlinniki and these go back to originals fixed about the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the Podlinniki we have enumerated bágor and bakán, two dark reds, the latter maroon, the other more purplish; they are called Venetian colours. The Virgin’s cloak is of this colour in Italo-Cretan icons: Venetian golubéts is both dark and light blue (said to be a copper blue, verditer); Venetian yellow, a bright chrome yellow; Venetian cinnabar, bright red vermilion; lavra, indigo; azure, ultramarine or its substitutes, coarse indigo (kub) or later Prussian blue; mummy, dark red; umber; reft’, dark grey with a blackish tinge; sankir, ochre and black (see above); soot; red lead; chérvlen’, crimson; Venetian yar’, verdigris (acetate of copper), light green; prázelen’, green with a bluish tinge. We can see clearly the dependence of Russian icon-painting upon the Venetian colours, which were exported all over the east.
Very noticeable is the predominance of red in various tones, also important it is which of the different reds is used and how it is applied. Bright red is the distinguishing feature of the Nóvgorod, Pskov, and in general northern school; this is the colour of Russian folk dress (of the peasant’s shirt, in kumách, what we call Turkey twill). It is from the north that the Moscow school derived its pink hills and buildings and the custom of brightening an icon with red patches of raiment[56]. When we remember that the words miniator, miniatura come from minium (a red colour,) we must believe that in this popular passion for red, we see the action of popular as against sophisticated culture. It is well known that the precious cinnabar was brought from Persia and was long the privilege of royalty and its general use only spread СКАЧАТЬ
This is from the root of
Kondakov,
Salazaro,
In Russian the root